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Teen pregnancy rate up after 10-year decline

What do you think? I think teens should have to take some sort of BC. No I am not bashing teen moms but having a baby is a big deal and schooling and further education is so much more important than having a baby at 16.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. teen pregnancy rate rose in 2006 for the first time in more than a decade, reversing a long slide, a U.S. think tank reported on Tuesday.

The overall teen pregnancy rate was up 3 percent in 2006, with a 4 percent rise in the rate of births and a 1 percent rise in the rate of abortions, according to the report by the Guttmacher Institute.

The United States has higher rates of teen pregnancy, birth and abortion than in other Western industrialized countries.

There were 71 pregnancies per 1,000 U.S. girls aged 15-19. In 2006, 7 percent of all teenage girls got pregnant, according to the report.

Look up stats - it goes in cycles. Teen parents raise kids who become teen parents (statistically speaking - if you are one or the other and it's not you, goodie for you, you are an outlier). This means teen pregnancy rates rise and fall on a 14-17ish year cycle.

Did you really expect the rate to continue to drop forever, and what other country qualifies as Western and industrialized Canada? Got any newer numbers 2006 was a long time ago.

Answer by
Anonymous
at 1:17 PM on Jan. 26, 2010

alot of the teen parents i know come from 2 parent affluent christian households who did NOT have babies as teens.

Answer by
Anonymous
at 1:19 PM on Jan. 26, 2010

Did anyone watch the Lifetime movie The Baby Pact? It was amazing---teens need to watch it. The movie was based on a true story about teens in a Massachusetts school. It would prevent girls from wanting to get pregnant,I think. I was appalled at the girls who deliberately got pregnant. Anyway, teen pregnancy needs to be dealt with---prevention BEFORE it happens. The movie gave a realistic account of what happened when the girls got pregnant. And, they gave us examples of what happened after babies were born.They found out what a mistake they made. Very good movie.

The one thing the article does say is that they believe that absitnees only programs are to blame, but the reaserachers are part of planned parenthood. so what do you expect them to say. guttmacher = planned parenthood which is almost fully funded by government programs.

Answer by
Anonymous
at 1:23 PM on Jan. 26, 2010

I agree with Lindalu2. Prevention is key to preventing teen pregnancies. Some kids are raised to not have premarital sex, and they don't. I commend those parents and kids who don't. The majority of teens are sexually active and it's sad that parents would rather overlook that & get all pissy because their kid's school offers BC counseling or condoms. Having your head in the sand does not help anyone. These same parents are usually the ones that insist that providing BC is going to encourage teenagers to have sex. Yeah....THAT'S why they want to have sex!

You can push abstinence and you can push BC all you want. Both will reduce SOME of the teen pregnancies. Until we stop letting the media sexualize our children showing them it's ok to be sexually active at an early age, nothing will change. Until society as a whole agrees that we don't have to be heroes to every one but a hero to our family, nothing will change. Much of society tells females that our worth is only measured by our physical beauty and how good we are in bed.